The Growing Threat of Biological Weapons

For the past 50 years or so
the world has lived under the shadow of atomic weapons, threatening
a "nuclear nightmare" that would bomb us back to the Stone
Age. The recent revolution in molecular biology may have
incidentally unleashed a new threat to a peaceful night's sleep with
"living nightmares": genetically modified viruses and
microorganisms that could be used to develop new biological weapons.
It's a danger that author Steven Block thinks will get much worse,
unless biologists take an active stand against bioweapons—much
as their colleagues in the physical sciences took a forceful stand
against nuclear weapons. Block sets his argument in the context of
how bioweapons have been used in the past and considers the chilling
prospects for the future.